Customer Onboarding
WSO2 Support Services provides new users an onboard process as you start your journey deploying WSO2 solutions. As part of this process, a solution readiness checklist (SRC) will help you ensure that the solution is as intended and includes WSO2’s recommendations for a production-ready deployment.
Why is a Solution Readiness Checklist Important?
It is important to verify that your deployment is production-ready before using or promoting it. This helps you avoid unnecessary maintenance costs as well as poor customer satisfaction that can negatively impact the business.
The Customer Onboarding Process: Ensuring the Solution Readiness Checklist is Satisfied
The Customer Onboarding Process ensures your deployment can be validated via the solution readiness checklist (SRC) and that your organization extracts the maximum value from your WSO2 investment. The SRC’s main purpose is to highlight the key areas for a successful production deployment and will help open-source users, customers, and partners. Fulfilling the SRC guarantees a stable production deployment. The SRC does not prevent a user from going into production without meeting all the criteria; however, it lets you identify what's missing and take action. WSO2 will provide assistance with the SRC for subscription customers.
Figure 1: The customer onboarding process
Signing a subscription is the first place to validate the SRC as shown in Figure 1 (SRC Checkpoint: Signing a subscription contract). WSO2’s customer onboarding process typically includes one or many of the above stages until the production goes live. Providing assistance for an SRC validation will be done at any of the above stages.
There are two events that ensure the customer’s requirements are mapped to the SRC:
- Signing a subscription contract
- Customer production go-live (this can occur at the same time in some cases)
HOW THE SOLUTION READINESS CHECKLIST ENSURES A STABLE DEPLOYMENT
As noted above, the SRC contains key checkpoints to verify a production-ready deployment. WSO2’s two-step approach ensures that this verification does not impede progress.
The Solution Readiness Assessment (SRA) is the second step of the verification process. WSO2 will perform an assessment on each and every WSO2 solution on its customers. WSO2 Subscribers will receive assistance with the SRC and to monitor production readiness. The (SRA) assessment will be carried out upon onboarding a new customer to WSO2 based on the project’s lifecycle stages; there will be multiple checkpoints as the project lifecycle evolves until the go-live. This assessment guarantees that the solution and the deployment meet WSO2’s requirements. A Solution Readiness Score will be maintained internally for each customer solution based on completing a checklist item. The purpose of the score is to gamify or show progress towards a complete SRC by the time production starts.
Checkpoint 1: |
The SRC is publicly hosted on the WSO2 site. It is available for anyone to check and see whether their deployment meets the minimum standards recommended by WSO2. When a new customer is onboarded, i.e., at the time of signing a subscription, this checklist will be shared with the customer. The support team and Technical Owner (TO) will also join a call with the customer to run through the checklist and fill out known information.
Following checkpoint 1, the Customer Information Portal, which is maintained by WSO2, will be updated. Along with this, a PDF version of the filled checklist will be shared with the customer as well.
Checkpoint 2: |
At the point of going live, the customer will be requested to update the checklist if there are missing items. The support team and TO can also join a call with the customer to run through the checklist and fill out known information.
Following checkpoint 2, the Customer Information Portal will be updated and PDF versions of the filled checklist will be shared with the customer as well.
In addition to the above two checkpoints, there can be several other checkpoints involved in between as the project status evolves until the go-live date.